


Roundtrip

by Hagar



Series: Project: Aftermath [10]
Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers Turbo, Power Rangers Zeo
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Angst, Character Study, Disturbing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-12
Updated: 2007-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:50:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-Turbo movie, Rocky dealing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roundtrip

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with an issue which **may be triggering** for some people and which is not on the primary warnings list. This issue is nondisclosed so as to not spoil a major plot point. Based on readers' response from ff.net, where this had been originally published, i'd also say this story is **not recommended for 1 a.m.** \- it's a heavy one, trust me on that.
> 
> Dedicated to Mel, who I hope will know why.
> 
> Loving gratitude to beta readers Mara and Camille.

Waking up in the middle of the night sucked. Rocky lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Shadows rustled through the curtains, playing on the walls of his room. No point. He rolled on his side, carefully sat up, fluffed his knee pillow and lay down again. It was better with the pillow fluffed up to full height, but his back still hurt. He hated not being able to fall asleep on his side, but if he didn’t want to take more painkillers than was healthy then he had to go to sleep lying on his back, with a pillow under his knees to help support his lower back.

He rolled on his side again. No point. _Might as well get a snack._ He got up. He’d left the door to his room open when he’d gone to sleep, so that spared him the noise of opening it. His bare feet made no noise as he crept downstairs and into the kitchen. Quietly, he opened the fridge door. _Hmm, pizza._ He put the cold pizza on the kitchen counter, dragged a stool over, sat down and began munching.

What day was tomorrow? Wednesday. Wednesday was Little Angel’s Haven day. He’d resumed volunteering there as part of restarting his old routine. He was still limited in what he could do, unable to either run around with the kids or sit down for prolonged periods helping them with homework, but the staff welcomed him back anyway. Tomorrow being Wednesday also meant he’d be seeing Justin and Kat. Well, not necessarily, as they had their own schedules, but he usually got to see Justin. Kat didn’t volunteer on Wednesdays, more often than not. He didn’t resent Kat for that. No point.

He got up and opened the fridge again. _Gratin. Why not. And leftover curry chicken._

He remembered when Kim had left. They could see it coming a mile away, of course. None of them was blind. The qualifications for the Pan Globals, Coach Schmidt’s visit, Kim’s excitement – all the signs were there. Yet they didn’t speak of it. If somebody dared allude to what may happen, the conversation died and a hush fell over them until somebody else started a new topic, preferably something as safe as homework. Maybe Kim and Tommy spoke about it, when nobody else was around. No point. They had ignored Kim’s imminent departure until she was already gone.

Only then did he understand.

He finished the gratin and he needed a side dish for the chicken. He opened the fridge again, closed it, and cut a couple slices of bread.

He remembered when Jason, Zack and Trini had left. He remembered Aisha that night, as the three of them sat in Adam’s parents’ living room with popcorn and movies they didn’t truly watch, wondering out loud how could Kim and Billy not resent the three of them. “We’re practically taking the place of three of their best friends,” she had said, “doesn’t this seem weird to you guys?”

No point.

_Hey, I didn’t know Mom made meatballs. Goes just fine with the bread._

He didn’t understand until Kim had left, until the first time they returned to the Command Centre and demorphed and it was Kat standing there, hesitantly tucking her hair behind her ears, and her eyes grey with the same question Aisha had asked: _don’t you hate me for taking her place?_

He felt nothing but compassion for her, then, knowing how the responsibility didn’t really sink in until after the first battle, just wanting to ease the transition for her. He saw the same reaction in the others, everybody reaching out to her. No way could he resent the person who had just fought side by side with him, who he knew would risk her life for him because she’d just done so. No point. But the person who’d left, though…

He understood then why Kim and Billy didn’t resent Adam, Aisha and him when they had become Rangers. You didn’t resent the ones who stepped up. You resented the ones who abandoned their guard. You forgave them for that, eventually, because they were friends and you wanted them to be happy, but for the longest while, you resented them for caring about something else more than they did for duty. You hated them because it wasn’t _duty_ to them anymore, and it still was to you.

He almost hated Kim in that moment, as he told a joke, as Tommy stood a little closer to Kat, Aisha replied to him in kind, and after a few moments Kat’s eyes were blue again.

_Soup’s no good cold. Maybe some jam? I’ve had enough of bread. Hey, sausages._

As much as Kim was hard, it was nothing compared to how he’d felt when Aisha had left. It was on a totally different scale. Nothing he’d been through until then had prepared him for it. It wasn’t so much the hurt of a friend leaving – without warning, without preparation, just turning her back and leaving – it wasn’t even the feeling of having a part of his past, a part of his childhood, of himself, ripped away; it was the impossible anger at someone who had laid down her weapons and quit, who had abandoned a cause he still believed in, still fought for, would still give his life for. It wasn’t the abandonment per se: she’d sent Tanya, after all. She didn’t leave them a Ranger short.

But he hated Aisha in that moment, looking at another girl whose eyes asked how could he not resent her. And it’d been a while before he fully understood that, before he really got what was so hurtful about the situation.

No point.

_Roast. Pickles. Potatoes._

It was the message her leaving sent. That being a Ranger wasn’t enough, wasn’t important enough, that service was a burden and not a duty, a sacred right. And that, coming from a friend, from someone whose opinion he valued – that tore his heart out of his chest. And if he managed to forgive her that, for a moment, he was shaken by disappointment with her, that she’d left them with a stranger, that she didn’t care enough about any of them to return.

No point, no point.

_Jam, peanut butter – damn, I’m almost out of bread._

So he didn’t resent Kat for avoiding him. He understood. He didn’t resent Tanya or Tommy for always being so busy. He told Adam, “It’s okay, I know,” and meant it when Adam had apologized, yet again. Rocky knew, after all, that they needed the healing time, too.

But fuck it, he didn’t ask for this. He didn’t want this. He didn’t have some grand aim in life which being a Ranger got in the way of. He got cocky, took a fall, and found himself in the hospital with two cracked vertebrae. He was damn lucky for being a Ranger – those first twenty-four hours with a morpher still on his wrist had saved him from the worst long-term implications of his injury. The doctors thought that the cracks the initial x-ray had shown were just a shadow, because they weren’t visible in the second shot they took, two days later, and cracked bones didn’t heal that fast, did they?

He didn’t give the morpher to Justin because he’d had enough. He didn’t give the morpher to Justin because there was something that came to matter to him more than his duty as a Power Ranger. He gave the morpher to Justin precisely because he wanted what was best for the team.

No point.

Rocky stared at the kitchen: the carton box that had held the pizza, plates everywhere, now-empty plastic boxes…

He was glad for the toilet downstairs. He’d been grateful for that tiny room almost every night. It saved him from having to run upstairs and lessened the chances of anyone hearing him. He was yet to learn how to throw up silently.

When it was finally over he leaned against the toilet seat, resting his head against the cool wall.

No point, no point in the whole thing. He’d still left them. They knew, as well as he did, that he’d done the best thing he could under the circumstances. That even with the morpher he would’ve taken time to heal, time they didn’t have. The team needed five able members. The guys knew it same as he did, but this thing wasn’t rational. There was nothing rational about the feeling of someone not watching your back, anymore. Knowing why he did that would maybe help them forgive him faster, but they needed to heal from this, too.

His fingers twitched. Knowing all this had only made it harder for him. He was angry at his teammates – former teammates – for not helping him out; for having that hurt in their eyes when they looked at him. His anger wasn’t rational either, anger both at them and, even if he only admitted it at these hours of the night, at himself, for making that slip, for not dragging himself out of the hospital bed…

He dragged himself up, waited for his head to clear, washed his mouth, washed up the mess he’d made and returned to the kitchen. The smell of food made him nauseous, but he ignored it and cleaned everything up before returning upstairs. He considered taking a painkiller before heading back to bed, but gave up on the idea. Those pills weren’t meant to be taken on an empty stomach, anyway.


End file.
